Theatre

The brilliant Bangarra’s second Carriagework season, Ones Country: The Spine of Our Stories, presents three new works and introduces three debut choreographers. Each dance tells a story of the choreographers’ heritage, encompassing North East Arnhem Land, the urban wilderness and Torres Strait Islands.

As You Like It may be taken as you like it. A month ago it was possible to see this popular Shakespearean play in Melbourne performed by an all-male cast and currently it is being performed in Sydney as the debut production of the all-female She Shakespeare Company.

Jennifer Haley’s The Nether won the Blackburn Prize in 2012 and stirred debate among critics. Some found it “disturbingly sensationalist”, some found it “intensely provocative”, and some “squirm-inducing”.

Our Future Waterloo was the happy result of a collaboration between Milk Crate Theatre, Sydney Story Factory and the “always awesome Class Six students of Mt Carmel”. From the students’ moving acknowledgement of Gadigal land to their closing affirmation of team work and community, Class Six impressed by their sincerity and commitment.

You may wonder what motivates people after their working day to venture out to a draughty hall to take part in a drama class. Given that most people are self-conscious and shrink from carrying out a drama teacher’s demands to forget the self and behave in all kinds of embarrassing ways (pretend you’re a hungry cat, she might say, or fly like a bird) or that most people are appalled by the prospect of speaking in public, why do people enroll in a drama class?

Bangarra’s disturbingly powerful Bennelong gives us a sense of what it might have been like to be born into a crucial moment of time when the harmonious existence of an ancient peoples was ruptured by the entry of an aggressive imperial power.

A powerful piece of verbatim theatre, based on interwoven and edited testimonies, Talking with Terrorists shows the complexity and perhaps intractability of terrorism. Particularly topical at the moment in view of Manchester and Jakarta, the play condemns unlawful use of violence and intimidation to gain political ends but also asks its audience to consider how and why individuals become involved in terrorist activity.

Winning the Pultizer Prize in 2005, Doubt is tightly constructed, topical and gripping theatre. Written in 2004 at a time when the Catholic Church was coming under scrutiny for having failed to take action against alleged child abusers, the play raises the confronting question of what is right action in an uncertain situation.